Truex Jr. tops in Dover qualifying

Published November 20, 2014

Martin Truex Jr. has figured out his home track - Dover International Speedway -- pretty well over the past several years.

Truex, who hails from nearby Mayetta, NJ, won the pole for the AAA 400 with a fast lap at 159.004 mph during Saturday's qualifying at Dover. It was Truex's sixth career Sprint Cup Series pole, but his first one since May 2010 at this one-mile, concrete-surfaced track.

"We worked through a lot of things in practice [Friday], and the car was pretty good in the first practice, and then we went into the second practice and fought some things," Truex said. "We've had a really good [car] the last couple of times that we've been here...Hopefully, we can put it together tomorrow."

Truex, a non-Chase driver, became the 17th different pole winner in NASCAR's premier series this season. His first and only Sprint Cup race win so far came in June 2007 at Dover.

His lap time was just 0.003 seconds quicker than Kurt Busch, who was the highest qualifying finisher among the 12-driver Chase field.

Paul Menard qualified third, followed by title contenders Carl Edwards and Kyle Busch.

Jimmie Johnson, the defending race winner, will start sixth. Johnson, who is attempting to win his record-extending sixth straight series championship, is presently 10th in the standings, 29 points out of the lead.

"I know there's a lot of focus on a rebound, but you look at Chicago and even the race prior to that [Richmond], we were fast, and we've been fast," Johnson said. "We just haven't been finishing where we've been running, and we got to correct that problem."

A.J. Allmendinger, Bobby Labonte, Kasey Kahne and Greg Biffle qualified seventh through 10th, respectively.

Other Chase contenders and their starting positions include: Denny Hamlin (11th), Brad Keselowski (15th), Matt Kenseth (18th), Ryan Newman (20th), Dale Earnhardt Jr. (21st), Kevin Harvick (22nd), Tony Stewart (28th) and Jeff Gordon (34th).

Stewart, the winner of the first two Chase races (Chicago and New Hampshire), holds a seven-point lead over Harvick. Keselowski is 11 markers behind the leader.

Mike Skinner was the only driver who failed to qualify.

Sunday's 400-mile race at Dover is scheduled to start just after 2:00 p.m. (et).

URL

https://www.foxnews.com/sports/truex-jr-tops-in-dover-qualifying